Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix

Title: HorrorStör
Author: Grady Hendrix
Publisher: Quirk Books
Expected publication: September 23rd 2014
Paperback: 240 pages
ISBN13: 9781594745263

 My Review: 

HorrorStör is a seriously fun book. It's a quick read with a very unique visual style. Obviously it's supposed to look (on the outside) like an IKEA catalog and is littered on the inside with descriptions and pictures of furniture. I really loved the concept of this story. The plot sounded so very interesting.

The book was fun. The story was creepy at times and interesting, but there were a few issues from the start. I did like the characters, but I didn't really feel like they were given as much development time as I'd like. When the shizz hits the fan, I was kind of hard pressed to care about anyone besides Amy and Basil. I sorta kind of cared about Ruth Anne, but that was just because she was like that sweet crazy Aunt in everyone's family. Character development was really sorely lacking in this book.

The other big thing was the set up. It took waaaay too long for things to get started. I understand that setting up the plot is super important. I get that totally, but it really took too much time to build tension. By the middle of the book the really creepy bits were being thrown at us out of seemingly  nowhere. I really though that Josiah was pretty darn terrifyingly insane, and definitely was a good bad guy, but I think he could have been used a lot more than the penitents to creep things up. I felt like he was pretty underused.

I did have fun with this one though, I really did. It was creepy fun. It really reminded me of House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, which is a book that I think did the whole "shifting and changing house/store to mess with your brain and drive you crazy" schtick, so very well. Whereas, HoLs was a bit too long in my opinion,  HorrorStör seemed too short. I think it would have been so much better with maybe another 50+ pages. (Although it probably would have been too thick to fit with the catalog theme?)

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